Greek apartment values still plummeting

There was a 5.7% fall in prices of residential apartments in Greece in the final three months of 2010 compared with the same period in the previous year as the economic slump deepened, the country's central bank has said.

The fall in the value of flats in the third quarter of last year has been revised to 4.1%, according to the real estate price index. Apartment prices fell 4% for the whole of 2010, compared with a decline of 3.7% throughout 2009.

The Bank of Greece (BOGr.AT) launched its index in 2009 to monitor real estate prices, in a country where property accounts for a quarter of total investment and 82% of household wealth.

The central bank said there were steeper price falls for flats which were less than five years old, where the decline reached 8.1% in the last quarter and the fall was an average of 4.4% for the year compared with a decline of 3.8% for older flats. In the second-largest city in Greece, Thessaloniki, price falls were at 9%, compared with falls of 5.1% in Athens in the fourth quarter.

Source: Press Association